Mothers, daughters and Oscar: A love story — especially...

1of3In 2009’s “Precious,” Gabourey Sidibe (left) has the title role and Mo’Nique plays her abusive mother. The mother-daughter theme can be seen in a number of films this year.Photo: LIONSGATE PICTURES

2of3Kimberley J. Brown and Janet McTeer in 1999’s “Tumbleweeds.”

3of3This year’s films featuring mothers and daughters that have drawn praise include “Lady Bird,” top right, and “The Big Sick,” above left. They join movies from the past that have look at the mother-daughter relationship including “Terms of Endearment,” top left, and “Mildred Pierce,” above right.Photo: Courtesy BAMPFA

This movie awards season is delivering a clear message: Call your mother. Or your daughter.

Mother-daughter stories have dotted Academy Awards history since the days of “women’s pictures.” This year, films with strong mother-daughter story lines, from “Lady Bird” to “The Florida Project,” are dominating the awards landscape.

These movies reflect mother-daughter predecessors in some ways, but also seem immediate. In other words, they are catnip for Academy voters, who probably will reward them with nominations in January.

Frances McDormand already is nominated for a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award for her performance as Mildred, public shamer of local authorities’ sluggish response to her daughter’s murder, in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” Margot Robbie and Allison Janney, who play skater Tonya Harding and her abusive mother in “I, Tonya,” also are up for Globes and SAG awards, as are Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf, who play a headstrong Sacramento teenager and her matter-of-fact mother in “Lady Bird.” Holly Hunter is up for a SAG award for her portrayal of the mother of a comatose young woman in “The Big Sick.”

Most of these films also have shots at best picture nominations, as does “Florida.” Willem Dafoe’s kind motel manager in “Florida” has drawn most of the attention, but its key relationship is between mother and daughter motel dwellers played by newcomers Bria Vinaite and Brooklynn Prince.

It is almost as if mother parts, once considered a concession an actress had to make upon turning 35, are now the thing to play.

“I don’t think ‘mother’ has that stigma anymore,” said Janney, who also stars opposite Anna Faris in the mother-daughter CBS comedy “Mom.” “And the mother-daughter relationship will never stop being interesting and fascinating.”

“The reason it felt like it was a bummer to get a mother part before was that a mother role was sort of a placeholder,” said “Lady Bird” director/screenwriter Greta Gerwig. “There were fewer women writing and creating. Mothers were shown as being either monsters or angels.”

Gerwig and Emily Gordon — who co-wrote “Big Sick” with her husband, Kumail Nanjiani, based on her own sudden illness — are the only female writers in the current mother-daughter pack. But women wrote the books on which 2009’s cycle-of-poverty drama “Precious” and 2014’s adventure tale “Wild” — both of which held significant mother-daughter content — were based. Mo’Nique won an Oscar for playing the abusive mother in “Precious,” and co-star Gabourey Sidibe was nominated, as were Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern for “Wild.”

One could argue that Mo’Nique’s character is a monster, and Janney’s not far behind. But performances can transcend two-dimensional roles. Mo’Nique’s showed a viciousness so towering you could see pain beneath it. In the serio-comic “Tonya,” Janney makes her mark with droll line readings.

The year’s other awards-worthy mothers seem like real, well-intentioned but flawed people who are as far removed from the mother-as-monster as they are from mothers-as-martyrs Stella Dallas (Oscar nominee Barbara Stanwyck) and Mildred Pierce (Oscar winner Joan Crawford).

This year’s Mildred (McDormand) is reeling from grief, but so prickly in general that you know the personality predated the daughter’s death. Hunter’s character gets loaded while her daughter is comatose.

Were these mothers purer souls, awards bodies would not be responding as positively. Stereotypical female characters do not play in 2017, year of the fed-up woman. From today’s perspective, screen mothers and daughters interested in the same man (in “Pierce” and “Imitation of Life,” to name a few films) seem like relics, but so do a theatrically shrieking (and Oscar-nominated) Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep in “August: Osage County.”

“August” was an anomaly in a progression toward authentic mother-daughter stories that began with 1983’s “Terms of Endearment.” Shirley MacLaine won an Oscar for her performance as Aurora, the hypercritical but loving mother to a terminally ill daughter (Oscar nominee Debra Winger).

Meryl Streep and Renee Zellweger star in 1998’s “One True Thing.”

Photo: ELI REED

Most forward movement happened in the 1990s, thanks to female authors writing semiautobiographical novels about their mothers. They included Carrie Fisher (“Postcards From the Edge”) and Anna Quindlen (“One True Thing”), who enabled Streep to win Oscar nominations as a daughter and mother in the same decade.

The ’90s rise of independent film brought compelling duos like Oscar winners Hunter and Anna Paquin, who played a mother sold into marriage and her daughter in Jane Campion’s alternately elegant and raw “The Piano.” In “Secrets & Lies,” a black optometrist (Oscar nominee Marianne Jean-Baptiste) discovers that her birth mother (Oscar nominee Brenda Blethyn) is white and working class. In “Tumbleweeds,” an impulsive woman (Oscar-nominated Janet McTeer) heads west in her beat-up car, daughter in tow.

This period’s mothers intrigued, but so did their daughters, no longer the bad seeds or ciphers used to prop up an older actress’ star turn. There was a push and pull, as there is between Robbie’s and Ronan’s characters and their mothers, although Robbie’s, sadly, mainly gets pushed.

Although not as seasoned as other actresses in this group, Vinaite and Prince show a believable chemistry in “Florida.” Putting that film in the mix gives 2017’s mother-daughter stories an unprecedented degree of realness and of timeliness, in larger themes of money worries and challenging authorities.

Hunter’s character outdoes MacLaine’s in hospital scenes, questioning whether her daughter is in the best facility. A lack of movement in her daughter’s case prompts McDormand’s Mildred to put up billboards chastising local police.

Mother-daughter narratives often have built tension on the question of whether mothers are viable breadwinners. But “Lady Bird,” “Tonya” and “Florida” mention money so often, it helps to have a calculator handy.

When her husband loses his job, Metcalf’s nurse character takes double shifts. In “Tonya,” Janney’s waitress single mother bitterly complains about bankrolling her child’s skating career.

“Florida” resembles the mama-was-a-rolling stone “Tumbleweeds” in that its jobless mother, Halley, also wants to be the fun mom. But there’s no whimsy in her itinerant status. And no car.

Her situation seems more urgent than those in “Tonya” and “Lady,” partially because she is poorer but also because her story is present-day, compared with the 2002-set “Bird” and mostly ’90s “Tonya.” Defiant toward authority in a less focused way, posturing and posing for selfies amid desperate circumstances, Halley feels like an emblem of today’s America, with its social media addictions and tattered safety net.